Thoughts of an atheist
by My name's AC
Summary: The thoughts of Grant Ward while he's in jail. The thoughts of the atheist who ultimately didn't take sides. Who was he really? How he was he really feeling?


**So, these are what I consider to be Ward's thoughts and what he really is. I really hope that he gets to be explored even more on the show.**

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><p>There were eerie whispers murmuring beneath his pillow, tucking him in the arms of ghosts. The embrace was strangely warm and it conveyed a sense of peace.<p>

Ward was trying hard to push the thoughts away and get some sleep. Funny how there wasn't a person that he remembered who was alive. For him, everyone was dead, either physically or emotionally. Still, it was ridiculous how it wasn't bad memories that haunted him; it was the good memories that terrorized him because he had very few of those.

Sympathetic feelings.

A will to smile.

The need to hear a few nice words.

Those were things he never really valued because they were weak thoughts, wasn't that how Garrett put it? Weaknesses, useless feelings that were supposed to be either erased or replaced in order to be bigger, stronger, harder, better. He was supposed to work as a machine, not to live as a human being.

Ward was well aware of how weak he was. He had always been a damaged, scarred and broken human being who never knew how to live for himself. He had strings tied to his body and really anyone could manipulate him. And he also knew he was a puny person who never tried to fight against the tide.

He could have had a different life. Whatever debt he claimed he owed Garrett was nothing but fear speaking for him.

Like a baby boy he wasn't a man. Until he was despised, hated, pushed aside and, ultimately, punished. He knew he deserved it, but he also wanted a second chance. Ward had never been given one. But then again, he had never been given the chance to make his own choices, so what did he really know about second chances? He didn't even know a thing about first chances to begin with! The only decisions he seemed to be able to make were between obeying and being hurt.

Ward was a puppet who hadn't learnt about scissors yet.

And now lying down on a mattress in a dark, tiny cell, he felt the lonelier than ever. All the memories he had only made him feel weaker and weaker. He was not a man of many faces, but the mask he wore was one of the few. No one really knew the true Grant Ward. His team didn't know, Garrett didn't know. Sometimes, even he didn't know what it was like to be him. People could only try to understand, feel pity for his sickening childhood, but no one knew what it was like to be beaten by his older brother, to be forced to mistreat his poor little siblings, to have parents that didn't care about anything. Deep down inside, he was a little boy with a big dream of breaking through and being someone greater.

Not just a hero or a role model, Ward wanted to be different from every one of his family. He wanted to be left alone, because if monstrosity was inherited, then he'd be better off alone, so that nobody would get hurt. Because evil isn't born, it's made. He had a good heart that was consumed by rage and sadness and bad choices that were not made by him.

All his life he was diminished, squished, stepped on and controlled. Just once, he wanted to feel on top of the world, like everybody around him seemed to be. They were always two steps above him, looking down at a scared little boy. He just didn't realize that it was possible to slip down the steps and get hurt this badly. He fell. And it cost him everything he had.

Even so, he was still so proud of himself. It wasn't his victory and he was in jail, but he was happy. He had climbed up the steps and gazed at the world from the top; it was everything a little crushed boy once had hoped. That boy now a man still starved for one thing: revenge.

Megalomania felt deliciously fulfilling. He had the chance to look down on others, step on them, play with them, hurt them. It was his way of experiencing what it was like to be on the other side of the game.

He may have been standing with the losing side, but he was still not convinced it was the wrong one. And as long as the wrong side felt right for him, there was no one who could help him.

Yet, the little boy was still living inside of him, crouching in a corner, as frail and scared as ever. When he hurt and manipulated his team, it hurt him too. Because each of them had awakened a weakness inside him and he had been taught to repress them and move on.

Lying on that bed, all that he felt was coldness, loneliness and quietness. Soon it all stopped. Ghosts kept him company, boiling anger inside him kept him warm and the whispers and distressed and begging cries buzzed in his ears filled every silent bit inside his head.

It felt just like any other day of his life. Nothing out of the ordinary.

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><p><strong>Leave a review if you enjoyed it.<strong>

**Thanks to my beta reader for having correct the little mistakes I had.**


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